France, Fin De Siecle

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Summary: France: Fin de Siecle
Review: Extremely interesting book about decadence and social decline at the end of the century.

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Summary: Anecdotal Pictures of Fin de Siecle France
Review: In Eugen Weber's work, France, Fin de Siécle, the author contends that the period leading up to the close of the 19th century in France exemplified characteristics that serve to define it as a separate entity from the later Belle Époque. In presenting this argument, Weber studies various aspects of Fin de Siécle France and attempts to show their uniqueness from other periods of French history. A time known for decadent behavior, dynamic social strata, new societal roles, and literary and artistic virtuosity, Weber artfully reconstructs the period with due attention given to the technologies and innovations pushing France's move towards modernity and convenience. In this manner, Weber's largest contribution to understanding of the Fin de Siécle period remains the importance his research places on French society's reaction to the radically changing world around them. Whether manifested in art, politics, literature, or economics, Weber effectively shows that the Fin de Siécle embodied not only innovative, but also quite reactionary responses from the French people - a point sometimes glossed over by focusing largely on the achievements of the intellectual and artistic subculture of the period.

In this work, Weber attempts to examine the larger social undercurrents in Fin de Siécle France, as this period remains forever immortalized and likewise popular due in part to the art and literature of the Symbolists, Impressionists, and Romantics. Though the period exemplified painstaking endeavors in decadence and the elevation of vice against virtue, Weber argues that such focus on pessimism remained a characteristic of a much larger societal grouping than solely the Bohemian intellectuals. By examining not only the predominate literature of the age, but likewise contemporary journalism and social commentary, Weber shows a society deep in the throws of overwhelming modernization and the implications of such a change. French society of the time feared a great transgression, as the proliferation of the popular press penetrated most all aspects of society and brought the decadent outlooks and opinions of the few to the attention of the many, further highlighting problems with alcoholism, drug abuse, and moral depravity. Examples such as Petit Journal and Petit Parisien substantiate Weber's claims, as the illustrations he cites clearly expose a society concerned with a commonly perceived transgression in response to the powerful forces of industrialization and modernization. Though the economic recovery in the last part of the period allowed for the Belle Epoch, Weber shows the French people to have a more fatalistic and negative outlook on social progress in the period after the Fin de Siécle and the beginning of World War I.

In order to prevent from devoting too much of his examination on the literary and artistic support of decadent behavior and societal ills, Weber presents the radical changes brought about by the process of industrialization in France and their effects on the daily lives of the common and bourgeois French people. Though the popular presses focused more on the decadent trends of the wealthy, Weber contends that many of the French people - namely the lower classes - began to experience a period of greater prosperity, convenience, and increased leisure time. Weber focuses on events such as the spread of electricity, the institution of closed sewer systems, the increased importance placed on cleanliness, and the use of the telegraph in order to show the advances made during the period that proved to have a more profound effect on the lower classes of French society than the upper classes propensity to respond to these changes with decadent behavior. However, Weber does recognize that society, as a whole, tended to initially show more displeasure with the radical changes of the time period, than to wholeheartedly embrace the benefits of new technologies, social reconstruction, and the new power ascribed to the previously underrepresented proletariat and female portions of French society.

Throughout his argument, Weber relies on anecdotal examples to convey his points concerning the social climate of Fin de Siécle France. By citing specific situations such as the Dreyfus Affair, as well as larger trends such as the new importance placed on sport and the theatre, Weber uses these cases to examine how the different classes of French society reacted to or even precipitated the events. In this manner, Weber does not make overarching generalizations of French society as a whole, but rather gives the reader insight into the positions each class took in trying to deal with the problems and issues that arose during the modernization of Fin de Siécle France. Though each class had its own considerations when dealing with the issues of the time period, Weber - through his well-researched anecdotal studies - shows that change represented one definite continuity between disparate groups of French society. In this sense, Weber's work proves somewhat invaluable, as it helps to perhaps decentralize the over-dramatized importance of the decadent writers and artists and shift the focus more towards the underlying forces to which other societal groups responded differently. Studies unlike Weber's tend to place too great an importance on the decadent and fatalistic attitudes mirrored in popular culture of the time and subsequently devalue the importance of improving standards of living brought about as a result of modernization. When placed against other historical works treating the time period in question, Weber's work presents an interesting and insightful way of viewing the reactions of each group in French society, as each reacted in response - albeit somewhat different - to the overarching sense of change effecting their society as a whole.